I absolutely love InstaGram, and the latest update -- especially the photomap -- has me loving it even more. But aren't there a lot of ways it could be even better? InstaGenius by CodeGoo certainly seems to be capable of filling the gaps.

What InstaGenius does is provide a big extension to InstaGram by offering over 20 new photo filters to quickly jump in and play with. Of course, some filters are better than others, but that's where the more than 20 additional adjustment filters come in, giving control over brightness, contrast, hue and other special effects. Users can even layer filters on top of filters, unlocking an incredible range of options to experiment with.

Also included is a collage creator, allowing users to make a collage of up to 6 photos with a wide range of layouts and customizable options. There are over 30 frames and mattes to choose from -- from gaudy, "classic art" style frames to modern, gallery style frames with clean or grungy borders. The sky is the limit, here.

What InstaGenius DOESN'T do is take photos directly. Users will need to take photos with their favorite camera app and then import them into InstaGenius for editing. Fortunately, InstaGenius offers an excellent browser for quickly searching through the photo stream. Users will find a convenient slider to increase or decrease the size of thumbnails, making it much easier to search through a large collection. It's a very handy feature.

Despite the little extra fuss required to get a photo into InstaGenius, exporting the result is easy as pie. Users have the option of either saving the final result to their photo stream or exporting it directly into InstaGram for some extra tweaking and uploading. Choosing to save the file locally is a nice feature, because it means that users don't even need to bother with InstaGram if they don't want to. They can have all of these fantastic features and upload the final results where ever they like.

While I did find some of the adjustment filters a bit limited (and some that I wouldn't bother with, ever), I think InstaGenius does offer enough features and options to make it well worth the asking price. For users who are finding InstaGram a bit limited and dated, InstaGenius might be just the thing for really making photos pop.

Review disclosure: note that the product reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note that if the developer provides the product or not, this does not impact the review or score.